Manufacturing Employment, Hours Going Down

Menzie Chinn
By Menzie Chinn of Econbrowser.com
Professor of Public Affairs and Economics at the University of Wisconsin •

U.S. manufacturing may still show rising output, but employment and hours worked are falling — a sign that production gains are driven by automation, firm consolidation, or capital-intensive activity rather than job growth.

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Manufacturing (gross) production up (until September).
 

Figure 1: BLS manufacturing employment, implied preliminary benchmark (blue), ADP manufacturing employment (brown), BLS aggregate manufacturing hours (green), manufacturing production (red), all in logs 2025M01=0. Source: BLS, ADP via FRED, and author’s calculations.

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